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Police busts

I like the cops and have nothing against them. But it’s exactly this kind of story that makes people distrust law enforcement.

From Cato and the Washington Post:

A police SWAT team raided the home of the mayor in the Prince George’s County town of Berwyn Heights on Tuesday, shooting and killing his two dogs, after he brought in a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been delivered to his doorstep, police said.

…[Prince George’s police spokesman Henry] Tippett said police are working to determine for whom the drugs were meant.

“My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs,” Calvo said. “They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don’t think they really ever considered that we weren’t.”

Calvo described a chaotic scene, in which he — wearing only underwear and socks — and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated for hours. They were surrounded by the dogs’ carcasses and pools of the dogs’ blood, Calvo said.

…The investigation that led police to their house in the 8500 block of Edmonston Road began in Arizona, officials said. There, a police dog at a shipping facility identified the package as being filled with marijuana. Prince George’s officers posed as deliverymen and brought it to Calvo’s home.

Calvo said he came home early from work Tuesday. While walking the dogs, Calvo said, he noticed several black sport-utility vehicles and a woman parked in a car down the street. “I figured someone was having a party,” he recalled. It was the police. They were watching, waiting for someone to bring the package into the house.

As Calvo returned to the house, he said, he spotted the large package that his mother-in-law had told a deliveryman to leave on the porch. He placed it on a buffet table near the front door and went upstairs to change.

“I brought it inside because I figured it was something we’d gotten for the garden,” he said. Moments later, just after he had undressed, Calvo said, he heard his mother-in-law scream that someone was coming toward the house. He looked out his bedroom window and saw officers in SWAT gear running across the lawn

“I heard a loud crash and then ‘bang, bang, bang,’ ” he said, recalling the sounds of the police shooting the dogs. “I hit the floor.

As the police came in, Calvo said, they shot his 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his 4-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room.

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." Albert Einstein
"If your worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on" Lance Armstrong
"Dress cute wherever you go, life is too short to blend in." Paris Hilton
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Re: Police busts

Perfect example of "closed-loop thinking". Back in the '90s, the US Air Force shot down a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter flown by the US Army in the "no fly zone" in Northern Iraq, because, according to the Air Force pilots "it satisfied the shoot-down criteria checklist".

Apparently, nowhere on the checklist did it say to "not shoot down UH-60 Blackhawks" so they went ahead and shot it down, despite high performance jet aircraft really not being that vulnerable to helicopters, and the fact that they could've flown close enough to visually identify it with relative impunity.

Same thing with SWAT teams, and police forces. Talk to any police officer, and the great majority of them want to do "high speed para-military" stuff. Unfortunately, good policing has very little to do with para-military operations.

Currently, soft-policing is out of style, and the money is flowing toward the esoteric, as is the training effort, so this is the crap you get.

The SWAT mentality makes leaders decide to use the teams whenever they can. Whether it makes sense or not.

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Re: Police busts

They said they had obtained a search warrant for the house, but they did not have a warrant to bust into house without knocking and guns a blazing.

I'm no law expert, but is there such a thing?

Chuck Lidell: I paint my toenails with pink and black polish. Problem is, I get more paint on my toes and on the carpet than on my nails. Any advice?Maria Sharapova: Don't you beat up other guys for a living? I don't know how to answer this.

Re: Police busts

So I'm going to ask a wild question: why were the drugs being sent to that guy’s house if everyone in that house was innocent? Drugs just don’t get sent to the wrong address. I agree with Phaedrus comments, to an extent, but drug dealers are known for booby trapping and being heavily armed. I would say, if they did anything wrong, it is that they did not get enough information before they went in. I see nothing wrong with how they did it; they just should have made sure before hand- which maybe they did.

Re: Police busts

Originally Posted by jaretac

So I'm going to ask a wild question: why were the drugs being sent to that guy’s house if everyone in that house was innocent? Drugs just don’t get sent to the wrong address. I agree with Phaedrus comments, to an extent, but drug dealers are known for booby trapping and being heavily armed. I would say, if they did anything wrong, it is that they did not get enough information before they went in. I see nothing wrong with how they did it; they just should have made sure before hand- which maybe they did.

If you want to ruin someone’s life put a bunch of drugs in a package, address it to your enemy, and ship it. The authorities might not even ask questions, they’ll just be kicking down doors, killin’ dogs, and ruining lives.

The real issue is whether it is appropriate to send a SWAT team into private homes, handcuffing the occupants at gunpoint, and slaughtering the family pets—all over the mere receipt of a mailed package of weed. I doubt it.

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." Albert Einstein
"If your worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on" Lance Armstrong
"Dress cute wherever you go, life is too short to blend in." Paris Hilton
"Money is one of the greatest instruments of freedom ever invented by man." F.A. Hayek

Chuck Lidell: I paint my toenails with pink and black polish. Problem is, I get more paint on my toes and on the carpet than on my nails. Any advice?Maria Sharapova: Don't you beat up other guys for a living? I don't know how to answer this.

Re: Police busts

I am guessing there is more to this story. There always is. While I do believe in decriminalization of marijuana, for the time being it is a drug and thus illegal. Why did the guy just happen to be coming home when he did? Why did they put the package inside the door and just leave it there? This is standard practice for delivery drugs. Plausible deniability: "I don't know what is in it or why it came to me".

I am guessing we will find out quite a bit more. I would wonder what the guy's bank accounts look like.

Re: Police busts

Here is more to the story.

Another quote from original article

Not only did the police not have a warrant to conduct a no-knock raid, but it now appears they were well-aware that a drug ring was delivering large shipments of marijuana to innocent addressees’ homes in the D.C. suburbs. The packages would then be intercepted by other members of the ring, all without the addressees’ knowledge or involvement.

Then I found this in the washington post:

county police announced the arrest of a deliveryman and another person suspected in a scheme to smuggle hundreds of pounds of marijuana by shipping packages addressed to unsuspecting recipients such as the Calvos.washingtonpost.com

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